[fsloth]

Yeah, I'm quite confident our family is an outlier. Our daughter is a huge disney princess fan, loves barbies but I don't see it affecting her love of STEM.

I have a hunch it's not the disney princesses that stifle young girls but just being told at some point in their lives that science is more for boys. You don't need more than that. Once you have a bunch of young girls, each of which have internalized this at some point in their life, it becomes part of their 'subconscious group identity' and that's that.

I think it's ok for girls to love princesses. It's not ok for their role models (mums) say so that they hear "i don't understand maths but that's ok" or something silly like that.

Kids learn rules from adults. Not from cartoons.

[telesilla]

In my experience cartoons are hugely impactful but I only have anecdotes, I'm sure there are good studies out there to refute or support us both =)

[fsloth]

Yeah, sometimes they get funny ideas from toons. I've found out I can 'defuse' those situations by joining the narrative and then going full on Roahl Dahl and suggesting something outrageous, which in turn puts the kid into a mode where they figure things out on a more philosophical level. I actually say things like "Yeah, the princess has a nice castle. I'm sure her father sure enslaved lots of people to build it" and they go like "that's horrible! No, um, let me think... I'm sure it was built by paid professionals!" Etc. Kids don't get damaged if you insert a little bit of cognitive wiggle room to their favourite narratives :)